Q – As per Cabinet Mission plan, in the Constituent Assembly to decide allotted members seat in each province, one representative was in ratio to which population?
(a) 8 Lakh
(b) 10 Lakh
(c) 12 Lakh
(d) 15 Lakh
U.P. P.C.S (Pre) 2003
Ans. (b)
Explanation – The Cabinet Mission arrived in India in 1946. The Mission proposed a plan for the formation of a Constituent Assembly to frame a Constitution for the Indian Union. The representatives of provinces were based on the population; roughly I representative over 10 lakh population.
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Cabinet Mission and Constituent Assembly The Constituent Assembly was constipated in November 1946 under the scheme formulated by the Cabinet Mission plan. The Cabinet Mission realised that the most satisfactory method to constitute a constitution-making body would have been by election based on adult franchise, but that would have caused “a wholly unacceptable delay” in the formulation of the new constitution. “The only practicable course” according to them was, therefore, “to utilise the recently elected Provincial Legislative Assemblies as electing bodies”. As what they called the “fairest and as most practicable plan” in the circumstances, the Cabinet Mission recommended that the representation of the Provinces in the constitution-making body be on the basis of population, roughly in the ratio of one Member to a million and the seats allocated to the Provinces be divided among the principal communities, classified for this purpose as Sikhs, Muslims and General (all except Sikhs and Muslims), on the basis of their numerical strength. The representatives of each community were to be chosen by members of that community in the Provincial assembly and voting was to be by the method of proportional representation with single transferable vote. The number of Members allotted to the Indian States was also to be fixed on the same basis of population as adopted for British India, but the method of their selection was to be settled later by consultation. The strength of the constitution-making body was to be 389. Of these 296 representatives were to be from British India, (292 representatives drawn from the eleven Governors’ Provinces of British India and a representative each from the four Chief Commissioners’ Provinces of Delhi, Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg and British Baluchistan) and 93 representatives from the Indian States.
The Cabinet Mission recommended a basic framework for the constitution and laid down in some detail the procedure to be followed by the constitution-making body.
Elections for the 296 seats assigned to the British Indian Provinces were completed by July-August 1946. The Congress won 208 seats including all the General seats except nine and the Muslim League 73 seats, that is, all but five of the seats allotted to Muslims.
The party-wise break-up of the assembly’s British Indian membership was as follows:
With the partition and independence of the country, on 14-15 August 1947, the Constituent Assembly of India could be said to have become free from the fetters of the Cabinet Mission Plan. It became a fully sovereign body and the successor to the British Parliament’s plenary authority and power in the country. Moreover, following the acceptance of the Plan of 3 June, the members of the Muslim League Party from the Indian Dominion also took their seats in the assembly. The representatives of some of the Indian States had already entered the Assembly on 28 April 1947. By 15 August 1947 most of the States were represented in the Assembly and the remaining States also sent their representatives in due course.
The Constituent Assembly thus became a body, it was believed, fully representative of the states and provinces in India and fully sovereign of all external authority. It could abrogate or alter any law made by the British Parliament applying to India, including the Indian Independence Act itself.
The Constituent Assembly duly opened on the appointed day Monday, the ninth day of December, 1946 at eleven in the morning.
The historic Objectives Resolution was moved in the Constituent Assembly by Pt. J.L. Nehru, on 13 December 1946, after it had been in session for some days.
The beautifully worded draft of the Objectives Resolution cast the horoscope, so to say, of the Sovereign Democratic Republic that India was to be. The resolution envisaged a federal polity with the residuary powers vesting in the autonomous units and sovereignty belonging to the people. “Justice, social, economic and political; Equality of status, of opportunity and before the law; Freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association and action” were to be guaranteed to all the people along with “adequate safeguards” to “minorities, backward and tribal areas and depressed and other backward classes”. Thus, the Resolution gave to the Assembly its guiding principles and the philosophy that was to permeate its tasks of constitution- making.
It ( Objective Resolution ) was finally adopted by the Assembly on 22 January 1947 and later took the form of the Preamble to the Constitution.
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